There’s a practice I’ve come to love. The wisdom interview. Sitting with someone who’s lived longer than you. Who’s faced challenges you’re facing. Who’s made decisions you’re trying to make. And asking them about their journey.
Not as a formal conversation where you’re extracting information to check off a list. But as a genuine inquiry into how someone became who they are. What shaped their thinking. What they learned that nobody could have taught them.
I know of an elder in Nairobi who’s been in community development for forty years. Someone sat down with her and asked about mentoring, about what she’d learned about helping people grow, about what she’d seen change over decades.
She told stories that shifted how people thought about the work. About mentoring relationships that transformed her own development. About the young people she invested in who’ve gone on to change their communities. About mistakes she made and what she learned. About the difference between helping and empowering. About what actually lasts in the face of all the changes. About what broke and why. About what endured despite pressure.
Stories like that are disappearing because we don’t create space for them to be heard. We don’t ask. We move too fast to listen.
The wisdom interviews follow a structure designed to go deeper than surface conversation.
We start with a question about the person’s journey. How did you get here? What shaped your thinking? Who mentored you? What was that like? What did they teach you that you didn’t expect to learn?
Then we ask about specific learnings. What’s a failure that taught you something important? What did mentoring look like for you? How did you know when to push and when to hold space? What changed your mind about something you thought was true? What do you understand now that you didn’t understand before?
Then we ask about what persists. What actually matters? What lasts? What do you want younger people to know? What do you wish someone had told you? What do you want your legacy to be?
Finally, we ask about their perspective now. What are you seeing? What are you noticing about the world and people? What gives you hope? What concerns you? What do you want to pass on?
What emerges from that structure is never generic advice. It’s lived wisdom. Specific stories. Perspective earned through time and struggle and reflection. Lessons learned through repetition and failure and adaptation.
I’m convinced that one of the reasons younger generations feel so lost is that we’ve lost access to this. We don’t sit with elders. We don’t ask them questions. We don’t extract wisdom we desperately need. We move too fast to listen. We’re too busy to sit still.
And I’m convinced that one of the reasons older people feel displaced is that they’re not invited to share their wisdom. They’re not given permission to mentor. They’re not positioned as valuable. They’re told their time has passed. They’re put out to pasture.
The wisdom interview is a small practice that addresses both of those problems. It creates space for wisdom transfer. It positions elders as valuable. It gives younger people access to perspective they need. It reminds older people that what they know matters.
When you do a wisdom interview, something shifts in both people. The older person feels seen. Feels that their life has been worth something. Feels that their journey has meaning. The younger person receives something they can’t find in books or training programmes. They get perspective earned through decades of living.
If you’re young, I invite you to seek out someone wise. Someone who’s been ahead of you. Someone who’s made the journey you’re making. Ask if you can interview them. Ask about their journey. About their learnings. About what they’ve come to know. About what they’d do differently if they could. You might be surprised what you receive.
If you’re older, consider who you’re willing to be interviewed by. Who would you like to share your wisdom with? What’s the story you want younger people to know? What have you learned that could help someone else? What would it mean to be asked?
That exchange is where real mentoring happens. Not in formal programmes. In actual relational space where wisdom transfers. Where one person’s lived experience becomes another person’s compass.
The Wisdom Interview: Extracting Wisdom From Those Who’ve Gone Before
